


Discovering a World of Color

by SomedayonBroadway



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:42:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomedayonBroadway/pseuds/SomedayonBroadway
Summary: All he could see was black and white. Jack Kelly wasn't normal.





	Discovering a World of Color

It wasn't normal. Jack knew that all too well growing up. It was not normal. Yeah. He got it. He was special. Not in a good way either. In a way that made people wary of him. In a way that made people think there must be something wrong with him.

The world was black and white. That was how it was. Every new baby born into the world was completely unable to see color. That is, until their mothers would hold them. Until their fathers would tickle them. Until the people in their lives that would make an impact would touch them or interact with them.

Pink. Jack had never seen it. It was supposed to appear when he met his mother. It hadn't. His mother held him as a baby. But he didn't see the color. All he could see was grey for years.

Green. That was what Jack was supposed to see when he met his father. Only... Jack never had. His father was a stranger to him. Green was a color the boy was sure he'd never get to see.

As he grew up, he didn't expect to hear things about this at all. To everyone else at school or on the streets, it seemed to be common knowledge. To him, it was a mystery. He had no idea the world could be any more than black and white. A blur of lifelessness and simple shades.

When he finally mustered up the courage to ask someone about it, he had been seven years old. He'd run away from home again, after his mother yelled at him again. _"It's your fault he left me!"_ It was. Jack knew it. But he couldn't find it in himself to care. He ran and ran until he found shelter in an old theatre. They were fixing it up. He knew that. What he didn't know, is that someone would actually be inside.

"Well what's all this, honey?"

That was the moment Jack's life had changed. And the word "normal" would never apply to him. Never.

He saw something. The dress the woman wore that had once been the bland grey became something else. Something Jack had never seen.

Pink.

The woman was his mother. Only... she wasn't. But Jack saw the color. Pink. He didn't know until he asked her what it was. Medda explained it to him, confused as ever as well. And then she had taken him home to give him a gift.

Jack would never go anywhere without it.

It was a color wheel. He'd seen them, but never had he touched one. Especially not one so beautiful and clearly expensive. It looked almost like a watch on a chain. Only, beneath the glass was a wheel of colors that still looked black and white to Jack. All except for one. One that brought tears to his eyes.

Pink, it said boldly at the top. Mother, it said underneath it.

Medda. Medda his mother.

A year later he was being fostered by his soon-to-be mother.

Blue. It was meant to be brother. At least, that's what the circle at the end of the chain told him when a little boy came wondering into his new foster home with a terrified look in his eyes as he ran straight into Jack. His eyes the first and most blue thing the boy would ever see.

Though... it wasn't until a few months later that the color became clear. Not until a boy with a crutch came home in his mother's arms. Not until he carried him up the stairs.

Jack was nine.

Blue was easily his favorite color from that moment on. It was the color of Race's eyes. The color of the hat that was always backwards on Crutchie's head. It was the color of his brothers.

Pink and blue. The colors of a family to a boy that was never considered normal. The only colors on his canvas of water and trees that he would so lovingly paint across. And then one day, in somewhat of a daze from what he'd never admit to be a nightmare, he decided to make his blue crash into another color he'd never seen.

Jack was eleven when he saw orange for the first time. After a fist fight with two boys who thought it would be funny to pick on the little guys. His wheel said rival. There were two of them. The ones that always went after blue. The ones that crashed into blue with fierce and unwanted determination. The ones that always wanted to make his life so much harder. He was eleven when orange made blue fade a little for the first time.

It wasn't normal.

Crutchie was hurt. In the hospital. They almost lost him. And blue faded for the worst few moments of Jack's small life when Race clung to him in tears.

Orange was dangerous. Jack did not like orange.

Yellow was an odd color. One that many didn't see until they were grown. So it wasn't normal when Jack saw it at age thirteen when a Brooklyn boy confidently walked into his life, strumming up a conversation. Both boys marveled at the color of the sun before Jack was able to figure out what it meant.

Yellow. Partner. The color Jack would soon use to paint the reflection of the sun in the running blue water.

That word was different for everyone. Jack had been told that. Business partner for many. The person that would help out at the darkest times. The person that Jack needed to help him when the Refuge was put in question. They were going to take that place down. Because blue was too bright for a blackened place like that.

Spot. Yellow. _Partner_.

It was a long journey that Jack wouldn't understand until he could see brown when he turned fifteen. Something else that wasn't normal. Brown wasn't a color that everyone was always able to see.

So when Jack was lead away in handcuffs from a scene of a messy fight with orange, he never expected to see brown walls in the office of a Mister Warden Snyder.

Brown. Snyder. Enemy.

Jack _hated_ brown.

He wasn't normal. He knew that. It was no mystery to him.

At age fifteen, Jack found himself painting in brown. It was everywhere. He couldn't forget it. He wished he could forget it. But he found himself screaming in the middle of the night, brown memories lodged in his brain. He had to get them out.

He hadn't wanted pink and blue to find the brown and the hatred he held for it. He hadn't meant to lash out when Crutchie asked him what color it was.

It wasn't normal.

Neither, he soon found out, was having not met purple until he was sixteen. Jack didn't understand purple. He sometimes looked at his wheel, curiosity clear in his eyes as he wondered why blue and purple were not the same. That is, until he met purple.

Purple... best friend. David Jacobs.

Davey was unlike anyone in the world to Jack. Davey gave him a second glance when the rest of the world turned a blind eye to him. Because a kid who had it all hanging around a kid without a "real" family _wasn't normal_.

Davey was like blue in someways. Always there when he needed him. Ready to listen to him whenever. They had a bond that was important and unbreakable. But purple was different than blue. Purple was more reluctant than blue. Purple trusted him, but didn't follow blindly. Purple kept him grounded.

Purple and blue made a beautiful painting. Blue would fade to purple and there was no clear line separating them, despite the fact that they were different. The difference, though subtle, was there.

Jack hung that painting over his bed. When he felt lost, blue and purple were there.

Time moved on. Some colors were lost to Jack. He had never seen violet. _Sister_. Jack didn't have violet. But that was okay. He had pink and he had blue and he had purple. Though, part of him always wondered what it would look like.

Green was another story. Jack didn't see green until he was seventeen.

It wasn't normal.

Green was supposed to appear right away. All kids grew up knowing what the grass looked like. At least... normal kids did. Davey did.

But him and his blue never did know what it was like. Not until they met him.

Green. Father. _Kloppman_.

Kloppman. An old man who took Jack under his wing the second he started working for him. An old man that taught Jack things. Things a father would teach a son. Things about life.

Jack loved the way green looked.

The one that was most important to everyone made Jack nervous. Nervous that, like violet, he'd never be able to see it.

 _Red_.

Jack was seventeen when he was sitting on Medda's couch with his brothers. Crutchie was falling asleep on his shoulder and Race was dramatically draped over their laps. They were just watching tv. Like any normal day.

But Jack's life wasn't normal. And a question was asked.

"Do ya think we'll eva' see red, Jack?"

Jack froze at the question. He'd looked at his wheel enough times to recognize the word of a color he didn't like to give much thought to.

Red. _Soulmate_.

"I don't know, Crutch... maybe..."

"What'd ya think it'll look like?" Race was too curious for his own good, always trying to imagine colors he'd never seen. Like yellow. Like violet. Like _brown_. God, Jack hated brown.

Well, if Jack knew anything about soulmates, it was that it was beautiful. The way they would hold hands and sneak longing kisses. The way they would look at each other with such fond looks in their eyes...

"I bet it's real pretty," Crutchie answered.

"Yeah..." Jack sighed in agreement.

But soulmates were for normal people. And Jack was anything but normal.

Red was the most complicated color. At least, that's what Jack had been told. It took the longest to appear. Pink and green had shown up within seconds. Blue responded with touch. Yellow came delayed. After a conversation. Orange came after a first fight. Brown came with the first word. And purple came with their first laugh together.

But red was different.

Red took time.

Jack didn't think he'd ever see red.

Something odd happened, though. A girl walked into his life at the same time yellow became important and blue and purple because as fierce as ever. At the same time brown came back into his life, reminding him why he could see the color of wood and dirt. A reporter that wondered into their lives to follow up on the ragtag group of kids trying to take down some of the most powerful men in the city who had tried to improve the statistics of a high school by sending boys who jeopardized it to a place that Jack could only see as brown.

She had helped Race up when he'd been hit during a brawl. And Race had run to him asking him for his wheel and smiling excitedly when he saw what he was looking for.

"Jack, I can see violet!"

Jack was confused. And Crutchie ran to him later. He could see it too. But Jack couldn't. And he didn't understand why. Not until the strike against the Refuge had taken a turn for the worst. Not until Crutchie was taken.

"I believe in you, Mister Kelly."

"I believe in you too, Plumber."

Words that were rarely spoken to him. Words that his brain had to take a moment to process. But his heart tugged him to her on the rooftop of his home. And their lips met.

Jack saw red.

They pulled apart quickly, taking in breaths that were necessary as their eyes both darted around, taking in the new view of the world.

"Oh my God..."

"What is that?"

Jack fished in his pocket for his wheel. He held it between both of them. And she gasped while Jack's whole world felt better than it had in a long time.

Red, it said. Soulmate it said. _Katherine_.

The strike was a time when Jack could remember seeing so many colors becoming more vibrant than he'd ever seen them. For a moment, blue had faded and orange had only become brighter. Brown was beginning to fight across his canvas as pink and green attempted to help push it away. Purple pushed hard and strong, determined more than anything else. Yellow swooped in at the last moment, breaking through brown before red completely took over.

Red. Red had saved blue. Red had made yellow look brighter. Red had brought him back down to purple. Red was a beautiful color.

Jack carried Crutchie home the next day. Katherine was at his side the whole time. Race lagged behind, watching how close they stood together. Once they made it home and Katherine and Jack's hands touched, Race smirked.

"How's it look, Jackie?"

Jack saw the shocked look on Crutchie's face when he glanced up from the couch and saw them, carefully gazing into each other's eyes hand in hand.

"Beautiful."

That was the first night Jack painted the sunset.

Red was always around. Red never faded. Red was his world. Red was the color of her perfect lips and the shade her cheeks would turn when he told her how beautiful she was. Red was the color of the sky when he'd gotten down on one knee. They were nineteen.

And for the first time in his life, Jack felt normal.

Jack painted the night before his wedding. He was in a room with his brothers who told him it was the best way they knew that he could release stress.

It was her. Her beautiful pale face in the middle of a blue sky. Her smile lit up his world and she was highlighted to stand out with a shade of Jack's favorite color. Red. Her eyes were possibly his favorite thing to look at. Something Jack never thought he'd say. They were brown. Big, brown, beautiful eyes. And for once, Jack didn't think about why he could see that color. But he was grateful he could.

Blue was at his side when red was made permanent. Purple too. Even yellow. Pink and green were there, of course, supporting him in the most important decision of his life.

"I do."

Life was perfect.

By the time Jack was twenty-two, he realized he'd soon be able to see something he'd only ever imagined. Something that people marveled at and thanked the lord everyday for.

"Jack... I'm pregnant."

Gold.

A daughter.

After nine months and then hours and hours of angry screams and painful handholds, Jack was holding a baby girl in his arms. His baby girl. And he knew she could see the green in his eyes. And she could see the pink blanket around her. And Jack could see his wife's golden wedding ring.

And the world was perfect.

Jack may not be normal. He may not ever see things like violet. But that was okay. Because he had his family. And that was all he needed.

Now it was his turn to guide this little girl through a life that may not be normal either. A little girl who had completed every longing Jack had ever had.

Jack may not be normal. But it was at that moment that Jack knew he was complete.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thanks for reading! Make sure to tell me what you liked, what you didn't, what you'd change or what you'd improve by leaving me a review! Love ya, fansies!


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